In Theaters: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

In any case, Edward's absence sends Bella into a crippling depression, whatever sleep she can manage robbed by late-night screaming fits that spook her pedostachioed father. Her days are spent sitting in a chair staring out a window, as autumn turns into winter outside. (The passing months are listed in subtitles, should there be any confusion about how quickly snow falls in the Pacific Northwest.) Her only emotional outlet comes through e-mails sent to Edward's sister, Alice -- long, searching missives invariably bounced back to sender. Who hasn't been there? (Please put your hands down.) Are we sick of this yet? We're definitely starting to be, and it's only about 20 minutes into the movie. Not even Edward's return, in aerosol form, to warn Bella away from the reckless daredevilism she begins to crave just to feel ... anything ... can release us from a sinking and unmistakable feeling that we've wandered into the cinematic equivalent of one of those yappy, recently disposed-of, permagrieving friends. Call us back when you're over, it, OK?

And that's when Jacob arrives. Shorn, shirtless and cute as a Shar-Pei puppy, Taylor Lautner straddles the sweet spot between boyishness and manhood, acutely aware of his effect on women (and men -- "This isn't a lifestyle choice," he tells Bella, shortly after she learns of his secret identity), but committed to only using his newly acquired pectoral powers for good. As presented, Jacob is New Moon's shameless, hormone-tweaking sex object, and yet in him Weitz finds some of New Moon best rhythms. A scene in which he stands at Bella's window -- the most clichéd of all teen romance tropes -- is turned lyrically on its head as he leaps up the branches of a tree and lands gracefully in her bedroom (shirtless, of course). His arc is soon muddied by the script's failures, however, as a poorly developed allegiance to his den of vampire-stalking, anger-management-challenged werewolf brothers leads him to turn his back on Bella for her own good as well. She gets him back, however: By the time she climbs onto that Virgin Atlantic flight bound for Italy, Bella has given him countless cases of blue wereballs.

Not that it's his fault, but with Pattinson's return, New Moon quickly goes downhill. An audience with the "Volturi," the fancypants-wearing vampire elite, is utterly without credibility or tension. Michael Sheen's sinks his fangs into the marble scenery as their leader, but the performance is hammy and embarrassing, to the point of it actually bleeding into his other movies: during one of his interminable speeches, my mind wandered to and began to second-guess his showy work in The Damned United. Probably not what an actor wants to hear. Dakota Fanning, on the other hand, doesn't overplay anything, mainly because there's nothing to overplay. As a telepathic Venturi henchwoman, she simply glowers in an almost wordless performance; her longest scene is in a muzak-filled elevator.

At their best, what makes the Twilight movies work aren't their supernatural elements, which tend to be threaded into the narrative clumsily and executed the same way. It's their ability to boil things down to a boy, a girl, and an overpowering feeling. They may be filled with unintentionally laughable moments -- one vision of Edward and Bella prancing through a meadow in something that resembles a feminine napkin ad comes to mind -- but they also dare to indulge, free from irony, a teenager's fundamental need to need and be needed. And so it doesn't matter what you or I think: New Moon isn't for us. And it succeeds.

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